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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253442">Somebody's Daughter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness'>RobberBaroness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sweeney Todd - Sondheim/Wheeler</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Family Drama, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:14:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When nobody came for the little girl, it fell to Mrs. Lovett to raise her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Somebody's Daughter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>She considered simply raising the child as her own and never telling her any differently.  When Mrs. Lovett held the squalling infant, she would dream of a story to concoct, one where she was Johanna’s mother, having had one true night of love with Benjamin Barker before they hauled him off to court.  The girl would grow up calling her mother, knowing the story of how Benjamin Barker had truly loved someone other than his dear wife, and known herself to be the child of secret passion.  Johanna Lovett would be a beautiful name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course she couldn’t really do that.  Enough of the neighbors knew her by sight to know that she’d never had a child who lived more than a day, let alone one with golden hair.  And so she raised little Johanna Barker to simply call her Aunt Nellie, with a simplified version of the truth.  Her father was wrongfully sent away.  Her mother took a poison in grief.  Kindly Aunt Nellie had raised her like she was her own daughter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At first it was to hold on to one last memory of Benjamin Barker when she saw his eyes in the little girl, but she’d always had a warm heart for lost little things, and who couldn’t love dear little Johanna?  It was charity that she was doing in raising the girl, yes, charity which made amends for the fact that she’d failed to dissuade her mother from the arsenic powder (by sneering that if she was so selfish as to abandon her little girl to the wolves of the world, then perhaps she deserved to die), but it was also motherly affection.  And though she had not born Johanna from her own body, the girl grew more like her every day- her voice, her walk, the cock of her eyebrows when a boy fumbled at flirting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was a good, sensible girl, and on the whole had brought more joy to her Aunt Nellie than grief.  That was what a child was supposed to do.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Johanna loved to watch the birds for sale in the marketplace, but could only ever fantasize about buying one.  They didn’t have the money to spare for another mouth to feed, no matter how small, and there was a good chance her aunt would have butchered it for a meat pie.  Johanna knew how the business worked- you took what meat you could get, and you were grateful for it.  She sold a decent lot of the pies herself, and her cheerful talk and impish manner made any customers feel a bit ashamed of openly complaining about the quality of the food.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aunt Nellie was happy to let her go to the marketplace just to look, though.  In fact, she was fairly permissive about Johanna going anywhere and talking to anyone she wanted, with two exceptions.  Once she had spoken about a commotion in town when Beadle Bamford had been forced to chase a thief down the street who had then climbed up the side of a building and left the law to shout after him.  Johanna thought the story was a good bit of fun, but Aunt Nellie didn’t take it that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The beadle?  He didn’t see you, did he?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t suppose he did.  As I said, he was chasing the thief.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aunt Nellie had taken her firmly by the hand and looked at her with a severe glare.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stay out of his sight and don’t ever speak to him.  You never, ever speak to the law!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I haven’t done anything wrong!” Johanna said, feeling oddly accused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your father didn’t do anything wrong, and the law sent him to Australia!  If you see the law on the streets, especially the beadle, you turn around and walk right the other way!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other time Aunt Nellie scolded her was when she’d gone to give a stale pie to the beggar woman on the street corner.  Rather than being stern and scolding, she’d been blazingly angry.  Aunt Nellie had screamed at the poor beggar not to ever come near her little girl again, to take her bloody pie and run off, never to come near her shop again.  And then she’d turned to Johanna and told her she’d behaved like a proper fool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lord knows what sickness that hag carries on her!” she’d shouted.  “She’s a madwoman, she could have had a knife, she could have hurt you just for being prettier than her!  I raised you to be smarter than to give away food to street animals!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna was very careful after that to never be seen so much as talking to the beggar woman.  She still slipped her a pie from time to time, as it seemed a waste to throw them out when no one would buy them, but she was much cleverer about not letting anyone know.  Her Aunt Nellie was right, she had raised her to be smart.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A customer!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna looked up brightly as the haggard man stepped through the door.  Business had been even worse than usual this week, and the stranger looked as if he wasn’t going to turn up his nose at stale crust or weak ale.  She fluttered about behind the counter, making light jokes about the price of meat, but the stranger only looked at her, never at the food she offered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lucy...” he whispered so softly she almost didn’t hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m afraid you have me mistaken for someone, sir.  My name’s Johanna Barker.  I don’t think there’s anyone named Lucy hereabouts.  If there’s one who works in Mrs. Mooney’s pie shop, well, I assure you we’ll serve you far better here!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man reached out to her and Johanna yelped in surprise.  She didn’t want to admit to being afraid, but what was she supposed to do with some madman grabbing at her?  Aunt Nellie hurried in at the sound of Johanna’s cry, her rolling pin raised to threaten off any unruly gentlemen, but she stopped as soon as she saw the man’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t seem frightened.  She seemed shocked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it you?” she asked.  “Is it really you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna looked back from the man to her Aunt Nellie, wondering when anyone was going to explain what was going on.  The stranger was grasping at her hand now, looking to be near tears, and though he didn’t appear dangerous, she was growing rather irritated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Benjamin Barker,” said Aunt Nellie.  Just as Johanna was starting to understand what that name meant, the stranger embraced her, pressing her to his chest as if she might vanish at any moment.  Johanna stood awkwardly, wondering if she should be embracing him in return.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is your father,” Aunt Nellie said.  “I always thought the poor silly blighter might be back again someday!  And see”- now she was talking to Barker, not Johanna- “see, your little girl has been safe in my keeping!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man- Benjamin Barker- Johanna’s father was paying very little attention to Aunt Nellie.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your mother, where is she?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Before Johanna could respond, Aunt Nellie shifted her body so that she stood between them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Johanna,” she said, “tend to the bakehouse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The bakehouse, I said!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna cast another look at her father, pale skinned and odd-eyed, trying to imagine what aspects of his appearance and bearing she shared, then reluctantly left the room.  She tried to listen beside the door so she could hear what they were discussing in private, but all she could make out was indistinct shouting.  That was right- he must not have known yet that his wife, Johanna’s mother, was dead.  It seemed all the more tragic now that he had come home to know she’d killed herself from the loneliness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Johanna already knew that story.  Why send her away to discuss it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She managed to be in the bakehouse by the time her Aunt Nellie came to find her.  Benjamin Barker was to live in the room over the shop, she said, as if he was renting it.  And Johanna was to call him Mr. Todd or Sweeney, even if she didn’t think anyone else was listening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mr. Todd looked even wilder than before, but when he went to embrace her again, this time she did her best to embrace him back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was hard to love Mr. Todd, even if Johanna felt like a dreadfully ungrateful child for thinking such a thing.  She had thought of her father with distant sadness for so many years, but she had never dreamed that she would ever see him as a half-mad wreck of an escaped convict.  She did her best to smile at him whenever they were together, and never once forgot herself and called him father, or even Mr. Barker.  Mr. Todd was as familiar a name to her as anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One day she found herself singing as she cleaned the shop counter.  It wasn’t much of a song, just a simple little tune she’d once heard the beggar woman sing.  A lullabye, she imagined.  She didn’t know why, but it had stuck in her mind, and she was only half-aware that she was even singing it when he interrupted her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That song...where did you hear it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna didn’t want to admit she’d heard it from the beggar woman whom she’d been specifically ordered to avoid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know.  Somewhere, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You must have remembered it, though it was so long ago.”  His face was milder than she’d seen it before.  “Your mother used to sing it to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna thought about that, wondering if it meant anything.  Perhaps, or perhaps not.  But she leaned in towards Mr. Todd, and spoke to him quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What was my mother like?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And as he told her, his voice soft and his words flowing freely, she felt her heart warm to him just a bit.  She could love him as a long lost relative, if not a father just yet.  He had loved her mother, he still loved her mother, he remembered that her hair was yellow like wheat and she’d always had a penny to give to beggars on the street and she would embroider all of baby Johanna’s blankets with her favorite flowers, roses and daisies and small violets.  She could embrace a man who remembered such small, kind things about a woman her Aunt Nellie had so seldom spoken of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someday she would learn to see him as her father.  She would keep trying.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sailor boy who had saved Mr. Todd’s life was quite handsome, and when he came to visit he was so taken with her that Johanna almost laughed.  He said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she told him just for that, he could get a cup of ale.  She was teasing him, but not cruel-heartedly.  He seemed sweet, and besides he had rescued her father from a lonely raft at sea, so he wasn’t likely to try and ruin her before sailing off to the ends of the earth.  When he asked if he could see her again, she said yes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he started talking about marriage or anything like that she would have to think hard about it- Aunt Nellie was known to say that sailors were good for fun but not for life- but there was no harm in simply seeing him.  Anthony Hope, that was the name he’d given.  It was a good name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mr. Todd had watched them with a cold eye, which surprised her, given that she’d thought he and Mr. Hope were friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is there anything wrong with the boy?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, nothing wrong.  As far as I know, he’s of a fine character.”  Mr. Todd looked at her so sadly she felt sorry for him, though she wasn’t sure why.  “But don’t run away with any boys so soon after I’ve come home to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Johanna laughed at that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Run off, just like that?  No dowry, no word to my aunt?  Certainly not!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Johanna had always disliked the pompous barber who performed in the square (though she rather liked his golden-tongued young assistant, and had been known to give the boy a smile or a wink on occasion.)  She was quite happy to see Mr. Todd humiliate him, and when he shaved a man in a matter of seconds leaving not a single scratch or bit of stubble, she even felt a little proud of him.  He was more than just a runaway convict, he was a master of his trade.  He could easily have supported a wife and child in the days before his arrest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Beadle Bamford came over to congratulate him, Johanna knew she was supposed to look away- don’t talk to the law, wasn’t that what Aunt Nellie said?  But she wanted to see how Mr. Todd would hold up when talking to the law, and once again she was impressed, this time by his cool demeanor.  He didn’t appear for even a moment to have anything to hide, and even his eyes looked less odd than usual.  The beadle gave a few words in greeting to her Aunt Nellie, then gave Johanna an appraising glance.  Johanna looked right back at him, not feeling at all frightened, and even a touch superior.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the beadle left and they began to walk home, she looked up at Mr. Todd and saw his face stony and implacable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was part of it, wasn’t he?  Sending you to Australia?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you going to do when he comes for that free shave you offered?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mr. Todd didn’t answer, which was a kind of answer in itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And the others?  There were others who put you away.  Will you-” she broke off, not wanting to finish the sentence.  And then a wicked thought crossed her mind, as she remembered how the beadle had looked at her.  “He liked me.  The beadle, I mean.  Men sometimes like me, though I try not to encourage it.  If there are others you want to- to see, perhaps I could bring them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mr. Todd turned towards her, looking not angry but stricken, as if she had said something so dreadful that he could not stand to hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never!  I’ll never let Judge Turpin even see you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Judge Turpin?  Well, that was a name.  It was more than she’d heard before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And besides, Johanna, don’t be such a fool.”  Aunt Nellie was rushing to fill the silence in the conversation caused by Mr. Todd’s outburst.  “I raised you better than to act a strumpet, no matter what good cause you think you may have!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That evening, Johanna stole away outside with a burnt pie.  Mr. Todd and Aunt Nellie were talking (or doing something other than talking, which was too much for her to even think about right now) and she doubted they would catch her.  She handed the pie to the beggar woman, and when she held Johanna’s hand, Johanna didn’t try to get away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know that man,” the beggar woman was mumbling.  “That man in your house, don’t I know him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe you do.  I certainly don’t know him.”  Who was the beggar woman to tell if Johanna said a few secrets?  “I think he’s going to do something bad, and I don’t know if I should stop him.  I don’t know if I should help him.  I don’t even know if it’s really a bad thing, if the man he’ll do it to deserves it.  I want to be good and I want to please my Aunt Nellie and I want to be a good daughter, and I don’t know what in the world to do!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’ll be coming home soon to kiss you, my Jo, my jing,” sang the beggar woman.  Johanna smiled and sang along, having heard the beggar woman sing it so many times.  “Bringing you the moon and the shoe and the wedding ring.  He’ll be coming home again, home again…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Johanna snuck back into the house, she took a look at the clothes in Aunt Nellie’s trunks.  Nothing fine or even particularly pretty, but her aunt always wore them to good effect.  Johanna was smaller and her corset didn’t make quite such a striking difference as Aunt Nellie’s did, but there might be a dress with a low neck that she could pull tight and flaunt.  She could act the part of a coquette, and she could find this Judge Turpin, and she could…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What?  Lure him to his death?  Ensnare herself in mortal sin, just so she could be taken into her father’s trust?  Just so they could all be a family and she could find it within herself to love Mr. Todd as the father he was?  Just so Aunt Nellie wouldn’t think of her as a child?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What would it take to make them all the family they should be?  Would she have to do something bad, or would it be better to simply not know what Mr. Todd might be planning?  Would it be wicked to hurt someone who had hurt her father?  Would it send her to hell, or was it the sort of thing a dutiful child was supposed to do?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She tried to see herself as Mr. Todd’s daughter, solemn and determined and ready to do anything that had to be done.  Would that be the same person as Aunt Nellie’s daughter, friendly and joking and always minding the money they made with a cool head?  And she had once been another woman’s daughter, a woman with hair like wheat who had once sung that lullaby to her- but when she tried to picture her mother singing it, all she could see was the beggar woman.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, the beadle wasn’t coming tonight.  Before the week was out, he’d said.  That was enough time to decide how a daughter should behave.  Someone’s daughter, whoever that might be.</span>
</p>
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